Navajo

The Navajo are a Native American people from the American Southwest. The Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajo and Apache arrived in the Southwest around 1400, and they were largely hunters and gatherers until the arrival of the Pueblo and the Spanish. They later co-opted Pueblo farming techniques and began herding sheep and goats and growing corn, beans, and squash, and they also spun and wove wool. In the 1770s, the Spanish sent military expeditions against the Navajo, but the Spanish, Navajo, and Hopi later allied against the Apache and Comanche bands. In 1846, the Navajo came into conflict with the US Army during the Mexican-American War, and, beginning in the spring of 1864, 9,000 Navajo were forced to walk over 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. In 1868, the US government agreed to a treaty with the Navajo in which they were allowed to return to their original land in a large reservation, which was generously apportioned due to the Navajo tribe's relatively passive reaction to American expansionism. From 1873 to 1895, the Navajo were even used as scouts for the US Army. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the US government imposed livestock reduction upon the Navajo, hoping to solve land erosion problems on the Navajo reservation; the Navajo were concerned about the destruction of their old customs. By 2015, the Navajo had a population of 300,460 people, mostly living in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.